[haiku] Re: Rethinking the Haiku Distro Guidelines

From: Stephan Assmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>

To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:13:50 +0200

Hi,
I agree with the general notion that re-packaging an existing Haiku release
and adding a few more pieces of software is not different from what ends up
on our harddrives when we customize our installation.
But still everybody seems to want to hold on to the concept of forcing
people to change the name from Haiku to something else if the changes
become too much. Or if they include development code or whatever. IMHO,
this is just too complicated. Who decides what is just a customization and
what is diverting too much from Haiku's unique look and feel? It becomes
impossible to draw a clear line.
But something else is bothering me. If distributions are being made to
address specific needs, and we all agree that we would like to address
these needs in Haiku itself eventually, then isn't the obvious, preferable
solution that whoever puts in work to make a customized version of Haiku
should instead be encouraged to work directly with the project? In general,
we try our best to welcome new contributors. I dare say that most people do
not have a hard time getting their patches into Haiku, as long as they work
and follow the coding style. There are some exceptions to this, I am
painfully aware of (Brecht may throw something in my direction). The
biggest single reason for patches being hard to get commited is when they
are fairly complex and introduce new problems along with solving others.
Anyway, my point is we want people to work with us, not in parallel. And my
first argument was that the trademark policy needs to be crystall clear.
For these two reasons, I would say we should not make it any easier to spin
off custom distributions of Haiku. We should protect the Haiku name and
logo, period. If people want to influence the distribution to address
specific needs, but they don't want to release something not being called
Haiku, they have the very sensible option to become a project contributor.
Or they need to take the extra hassle of removing a few strings and
replacing some bitmaps. Which is easy to do, contrary to what some seem to
believe.
Best regards,
-Stephan